Lulua
09-02-2002, 07:53
Friends,
Many of us who live in Europe or North American often wonder why the
democracy we enjoy in these countries is not possible in the Muslim World,
barring a few exceptions; Malaysia, Iran, Turkey and Bangladesh.
Ray Takeyh is a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy and the author of an upcoming book; The Receding Shadow of the
Prophet: Radical Islamic Movements in the Modern Middle East. In this piece,
Ray Takeyh argues that "Ultimately...the integration of an Islamic democracy
into global democratic society would depend on the willingness of the West
to accept an Islamic variant on liberal democracy.
Read and reflect.
Tarek Fatah
============================================
Can Islam bring democracy to the Middle East?
By Ray Takeyh
Foreign Policy
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_novdec_2001/takeyh.html
The televised footage of an airliner crashing into the World Trade Center is
now the prevailing image of Islam. Media pundits decry anti-Muslim bigotry
and hasten to remind the public that Islam is a religion of peace and
tolerance, notwithstanding the actions of an extremist minority. But in the
same breath many of those pundits warn of a clash of civilizations—a war
that pits the secular, modernized West against a region mired in ancient
hatreds and fundamentalist rage.
This simplistic choice between "Islam" and "modernity" ignores a third
option that is emerging throughout the Middle East. Lost amidst the din of
cultural saber-rattling are the voices calling for an Islamic reformation: A
new generation of theological thinkers, led by figures such as Iranian
President Muhammad Khatami and Tunisian activist Rached Ghannouchi, is
reconsidering the orthodoxies of Islamic politics. In the process, such
leaders are demonstrating that the region may be capable of generating a
genuinely democratic order, one based on indigenous values. For the Middle
East today, moderate Islam may be democracy's last hope. For the West, it
might represent one of the best long-term solutions to "winning" the war
against Middle East terrorism.
Militant Islam continues to tempt those on the margins of society (and
guides anachronistic forces such as Afghanistan's Taliban and Palestine's
Islamic Jihad), but its moment has passed. In Iran, the Grand Ayatollah's
autocratic order degenerated into corruption and economic stagnation.
Elsewhere, the Islamic radicals' campaign of terror—such as Gamma
al-Islamiyya in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon—failed to produce any
political change, as their violence could not overcome the brutality of the
states they encountered. The militants' incendiary rhetoric and terrorism
only triggered public revulsion, not revolutions and mass uprisings. Indeed,
the Arab populace may have returned to religion over the last two decades,
but they turned to a religion that was tolerant and progressive, not one
that called for a violent displacement of the existing order with utopias.
Political Islam as a viable reform movement might have petered out were it
not for one minor detail: The rest of the world was changing. The collapse
of the Soviet Union and the emergence of democratic regimes in Eastern
Europe, Latin America, and East Asia electrified the Arab populace. Their
demands were simple but profound. As one Egyptian university student
explained in 1993, "I want what they have in Poland, Czechoslovakia. Freedom
of thought and freedom of speech." In lecture halls, street cafes, and
mosques, long dormant ideas of representation, identity, authenticity, and
pluralism began to arise.
The task of addressing the population's demand for a pluralistic society
consistent with traditional values was left to a new generation of Islamist
thinkers, who have sought to legitimize democratic concepts through the
reinterpretation of Islamic texts and traditions. Tunisia's Ghannouchi
captures this spirit of innovation by stressing, "Islam did not come with a
specific program concerning life. It is our duty to formulate this program
through interaction between Islamic precepts and modernity." Under these
progressive readings, the well-delineated Islamic concept of shura
(consultation) compels a ruler to consider popular opinion and establishes
the foundation for an accountable government. In a modern context, such
consultation can be implemented through the standard tools of democracy:
elections, plebiscites, and referendums. The Islamic notion of ijma
(consensus) has been similarly accommodated to serve as a theological basis
for majoritarian rule. For Muslim reformers, Prophet Mohammed's injunction
that "differences of opinion within my community is a sign of God's mercy"
denotes prophetic approbation of diversity of thought and freedom of speech.
The new generation of Islamists has quickly embraced the benefits wrought by
modernization and globalization in order to forge links between Islamist
groups and thinkers in the various states of the Middle East. Through
mosques, Islamists easily distribute pamphlets, tracts, and cassettes of
Islamic thinkers and writers. In today's Middle East, one can easily find
the Egyptian Brotherhood's magazine Al-Dawa in bookstores in the Persian
Gulf while the Jordanian Islamist daily Al-Sabil enjoys wide circulation
throughout the Levant. The advent of the Internet has intensified such
cross-pollination, as most Islamist journals, lectures, and conference
proceedings are posted on the Web. The writings of Iranian philosopher Abdol
Karim Soroush today appear in Islamic curricula across the region, and
Egypt's Islamist liberal Hassan Hanafi commands an important audience in
Iran's seminaries.
In the future, such Islamists will likely vie to succeed the region's
discredited military rulers and lifetime presidents. But what will a
prospective Islamic democracy look like? Undoubtedly, Islamic democracy will
differ in important ways from the model that evolved in post-Reformation
Europe. Western systems elevated the primacy of the individual above the
community and thus changed the role of religion from that of the public
conveyor of community values to a private guide for individual conscience.
In contrast, an Islamic democracy's attempt to balance its emphasis on
reverence with the popular desire for self-expression will impose certain
limits on individual choice. An Islamic polity will support fundamental
tenets of democracy—namely, regular elections, separation of powers, an
independent judiciary, and institutional opposition—but it is unlikely to be
a libertarian paradise.
The question of gender rights is an excellent example of the strengths—and
limits—of an Islamic democracy. The Islamists who rely on women's votes,
grass-roots activism, and participation in labor markets cannot remain deaf
to women's demands for equality. Increasingly, Islamic reformers suggest the
cause of women's failure to achieve equality is not religion but custom. The
idea of black-clad women passively accepting the dictates of superior males
is the province of Western caricatures. Iran's parliament, cabinet, and
universities are populated with women, as are the candidate lists for
Islamic opposition parties in Egypt and Turkey. But while an Islamic
democracy will not impede women's integration into public affairs, it will
impose restrictions on them, particularly in the realm of family law and
dress codes. In such an order, women can make significant progress, yet in
important ways they may still lag behind their Western counterparts.
Moderate Islamists are likely to be most liberal in the realm of economic
policy. The failure of command economies in the Middle East and the
centrality of global markets to the region's economic rehabilitation have
made minimal government intervention appealing to Islamist theoreticians.
Moreover, a privatized economy is consistent with classical Islamic economic
theory and its well-established protection of market and commerce. The
Islamist parties have been among the most persistent critics of state
restrictions on trade and measures that obstruct opportunities for
middle-class entrepreneurs.
The international implications of the emergence of Islamic democracies are
also momentous. While revolutionary Islam could not easily coexist with the
international system, moderate Islam can serve as a bridge between
civilizations. The coming to power of moderate Islamists throughout the
Middle East might lead to a lessening of tensions both within the region and
between it and other parts of the world. Today, security experts talk of the
need to "drain the swamps" and deprive terrorists of the state sponsorship
that provides the protection and funding to carry out their war against the
West. Within a more open and democratic system, dictatorial regimes would
enjoy less freedom to support terrorism or engage in military buildups
without any regard for economic consequences.
Ultimately, however, the integration of an Islamic democracy into global
democratic society would depend on the willingness of the West to accept an
Islamic variant on liberal democracy. Islamist moderates, while conceding
that there are in fact certain "universal" democratic values, maintain that
different civilizations must be able to express these values in a context
that is acceptable and appropriate to their particular region. Moderate
Islamists, therefore, will continue to struggle against any form of U.S.
hegemony, whether in political or cultural terms, and are much more
comfortable with a multipolar, multi-"civilizational" international system.
Khatami's call for a "dialogue of civilizations" presupposes that there is
no single universal standard judging the effectiveness of democracy and
human rights.
Certainly, the West should resist totalitarian states who use the rhetoric
of democracy while rejecting its essence through false claims of cultural
authenticity. But even though an Islamic democracy will resist certain
elements of post-Enlightenment liberalism, it will still be a system that
features regular elections, accepts dissent and opposition parties, and
condones a free press and division of power between branches of state. As
such, any fair reading of Islamic democracy will reveal that it is a genuine
effort to conceive a system of government responsive to popular will. And
this effort is worthy of Western acclaim.
__________________________________________________ ______________________
__________________________________________________ ______________________
Many of us who live in Europe or North American often wonder why the
democracy we enjoy in these countries is not possible in the Muslim World,
barring a few exceptions; Malaysia, Iran, Turkey and Bangladesh.
Ray Takeyh is a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy and the author of an upcoming book; The Receding Shadow of the
Prophet: Radical Islamic Movements in the Modern Middle East. In this piece,
Ray Takeyh argues that "Ultimately...the integration of an Islamic democracy
into global democratic society would depend on the willingness of the West
to accept an Islamic variant on liberal democracy.
Read and reflect.
Tarek Fatah
============================================
Can Islam bring democracy to the Middle East?
By Ray Takeyh
Foreign Policy
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_novdec_2001/takeyh.html
The televised footage of an airliner crashing into the World Trade Center is
now the prevailing image of Islam. Media pundits decry anti-Muslim bigotry
and hasten to remind the public that Islam is a religion of peace and
tolerance, notwithstanding the actions of an extremist minority. But in the
same breath many of those pundits warn of a clash of civilizations—a war
that pits the secular, modernized West against a region mired in ancient
hatreds and fundamentalist rage.
This simplistic choice between "Islam" and "modernity" ignores a third
option that is emerging throughout the Middle East. Lost amidst the din of
cultural saber-rattling are the voices calling for an Islamic reformation: A
new generation of theological thinkers, led by figures such as Iranian
President Muhammad Khatami and Tunisian activist Rached Ghannouchi, is
reconsidering the orthodoxies of Islamic politics. In the process, such
leaders are demonstrating that the region may be capable of generating a
genuinely democratic order, one based on indigenous values. For the Middle
East today, moderate Islam may be democracy's last hope. For the West, it
might represent one of the best long-term solutions to "winning" the war
against Middle East terrorism.
Militant Islam continues to tempt those on the margins of society (and
guides anachronistic forces such as Afghanistan's Taliban and Palestine's
Islamic Jihad), but its moment has passed. In Iran, the Grand Ayatollah's
autocratic order degenerated into corruption and economic stagnation.
Elsewhere, the Islamic radicals' campaign of terror—such as Gamma
al-Islamiyya in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon—failed to produce any
political change, as their violence could not overcome the brutality of the
states they encountered. The militants' incendiary rhetoric and terrorism
only triggered public revulsion, not revolutions and mass uprisings. Indeed,
the Arab populace may have returned to religion over the last two decades,
but they turned to a religion that was tolerant and progressive, not one
that called for a violent displacement of the existing order with utopias.
Political Islam as a viable reform movement might have petered out were it
not for one minor detail: The rest of the world was changing. The collapse
of the Soviet Union and the emergence of democratic regimes in Eastern
Europe, Latin America, and East Asia electrified the Arab populace. Their
demands were simple but profound. As one Egyptian university student
explained in 1993, "I want what they have in Poland, Czechoslovakia. Freedom
of thought and freedom of speech." In lecture halls, street cafes, and
mosques, long dormant ideas of representation, identity, authenticity, and
pluralism began to arise.
The task of addressing the population's demand for a pluralistic society
consistent with traditional values was left to a new generation of Islamist
thinkers, who have sought to legitimize democratic concepts through the
reinterpretation of Islamic texts and traditions. Tunisia's Ghannouchi
captures this spirit of innovation by stressing, "Islam did not come with a
specific program concerning life. It is our duty to formulate this program
through interaction between Islamic precepts and modernity." Under these
progressive readings, the well-delineated Islamic concept of shura
(consultation) compels a ruler to consider popular opinion and establishes
the foundation for an accountable government. In a modern context, such
consultation can be implemented through the standard tools of democracy:
elections, plebiscites, and referendums. The Islamic notion of ijma
(consensus) has been similarly accommodated to serve as a theological basis
for majoritarian rule. For Muslim reformers, Prophet Mohammed's injunction
that "differences of opinion within my community is a sign of God's mercy"
denotes prophetic approbation of diversity of thought and freedom of speech.
The new generation of Islamists has quickly embraced the benefits wrought by
modernization and globalization in order to forge links between Islamist
groups and thinkers in the various states of the Middle East. Through
mosques, Islamists easily distribute pamphlets, tracts, and cassettes of
Islamic thinkers and writers. In today's Middle East, one can easily find
the Egyptian Brotherhood's magazine Al-Dawa in bookstores in the Persian
Gulf while the Jordanian Islamist daily Al-Sabil enjoys wide circulation
throughout the Levant. The advent of the Internet has intensified such
cross-pollination, as most Islamist journals, lectures, and conference
proceedings are posted on the Web. The writings of Iranian philosopher Abdol
Karim Soroush today appear in Islamic curricula across the region, and
Egypt's Islamist liberal Hassan Hanafi commands an important audience in
Iran's seminaries.
In the future, such Islamists will likely vie to succeed the region's
discredited military rulers and lifetime presidents. But what will a
prospective Islamic democracy look like? Undoubtedly, Islamic democracy will
differ in important ways from the model that evolved in post-Reformation
Europe. Western systems elevated the primacy of the individual above the
community and thus changed the role of religion from that of the public
conveyor of community values to a private guide for individual conscience.
In contrast, an Islamic democracy's attempt to balance its emphasis on
reverence with the popular desire for self-expression will impose certain
limits on individual choice. An Islamic polity will support fundamental
tenets of democracy—namely, regular elections, separation of powers, an
independent judiciary, and institutional opposition—but it is unlikely to be
a libertarian paradise.
The question of gender rights is an excellent example of the strengths—and
limits—of an Islamic democracy. The Islamists who rely on women's votes,
grass-roots activism, and participation in labor markets cannot remain deaf
to women's demands for equality. Increasingly, Islamic reformers suggest the
cause of women's failure to achieve equality is not religion but custom. The
idea of black-clad women passively accepting the dictates of superior males
is the province of Western caricatures. Iran's parliament, cabinet, and
universities are populated with women, as are the candidate lists for
Islamic opposition parties in Egypt and Turkey. But while an Islamic
democracy will not impede women's integration into public affairs, it will
impose restrictions on them, particularly in the realm of family law and
dress codes. In such an order, women can make significant progress, yet in
important ways they may still lag behind their Western counterparts.
Moderate Islamists are likely to be most liberal in the realm of economic
policy. The failure of command economies in the Middle East and the
centrality of global markets to the region's economic rehabilitation have
made minimal government intervention appealing to Islamist theoreticians.
Moreover, a privatized economy is consistent with classical Islamic economic
theory and its well-established protection of market and commerce. The
Islamist parties have been among the most persistent critics of state
restrictions on trade and measures that obstruct opportunities for
middle-class entrepreneurs.
The international implications of the emergence of Islamic democracies are
also momentous. While revolutionary Islam could not easily coexist with the
international system, moderate Islam can serve as a bridge between
civilizations. The coming to power of moderate Islamists throughout the
Middle East might lead to a lessening of tensions both within the region and
between it and other parts of the world. Today, security experts talk of the
need to "drain the swamps" and deprive terrorists of the state sponsorship
that provides the protection and funding to carry out their war against the
West. Within a more open and democratic system, dictatorial regimes would
enjoy less freedom to support terrorism or engage in military buildups
without any regard for economic consequences.
Ultimately, however, the integration of an Islamic democracy into global
democratic society would depend on the willingness of the West to accept an
Islamic variant on liberal democracy. Islamist moderates, while conceding
that there are in fact certain "universal" democratic values, maintain that
different civilizations must be able to express these values in a context
that is acceptable and appropriate to their particular region. Moderate
Islamists, therefore, will continue to struggle against any form of U.S.
hegemony, whether in political or cultural terms, and are much more
comfortable with a multipolar, multi-"civilizational" international system.
Khatami's call for a "dialogue of civilizations" presupposes that there is
no single universal standard judging the effectiveness of democracy and
human rights.
Certainly, the West should resist totalitarian states who use the rhetoric
of democracy while rejecting its essence through false claims of cultural
authenticity. But even though an Islamic democracy will resist certain
elements of post-Enlightenment liberalism, it will still be a system that
features regular elections, accepts dissent and opposition parties, and
condones a free press and division of power between branches of state. As
such, any fair reading of Islamic democracy will reveal that it is a genuine
effort to conceive a system of government responsive to popular will. And
this effort is worthy of Western acclaim.
__________________________________________________ ______________________
__________________________________________________ ______________________